If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

KDE input validation vulnerability

i also just found this one guys, i know alot of you use Linux so i thought id post this for you so you know whats goin on, im including the HOLE story so you can read it.
the patch site is towards the bottom, enjoy

Description: Several vulnerabilities were reported in KDE. A remote user may be able to execute arbitrary commands on a target user's system.

It is reported that KDE does not properly quote user-supplied data passed to the command shell. The data may include URLs, filenames, and e-mail addresses. A remote user can provide specially crafted forms of this to a target user via e-mail, web page, or files to potentially execute arbitrary commands on the system. The commands would run with the privileges of the target user.

No further details were provided.

The vendor credits FozZy of the "Hackademy Audit Project" for reporting these flaws.

Impact: A remote user may be able to cause arbitrary shell commands to be execute on the target user's system.

All KDE 2 releases and all KDE 3 releases (up to and including
KDE 3.0.5).

2. Overview:

In some instances KDE fails to properly quote parameters of
instructions passed to a command shell for execution.

These parameters may incorporate data such as URLs, filenames and
e-mail addresses, and this data may be provided remotely to a victim
in an e-mail, a webpage or files on a network filesystem or other
untrusted source.

By carefully crafting such data an attacker might be able to
execute arbitary commands on a vulnerable sytem using the victim's
account and privileges.

The KDE Project is not aware of any existing exploits of these
vulnerabilities, but is releasing this advisory with patches to
correct the issues. The patches also provide better safe guards and
check data from untrusted sources more strictly in multiple places.

3. Impact:

The vulnerabilities potentially enable local or remote attackers
to compromise the privacy of a vicitim's data and to execute arbitrary
shell commands with the victim's privileges, such as erasing files or
accessing or modifying data.

4. Solution:

The code audit resulted in several fixes which have been applied
to the KDE 2.2.x and each KDE 3.x branch.

All identified problems have been corrected in KDE 3.0.5a.
For affected KDE 3.0 systems, we strongly recommend upgrading
to this latest stable release.

Please visit the 3.0.5a Info Page (http://www.kde.org/info/3.0.5a.html)
and your vendor's website for exact package locations and information
about available binary packages or updates.

For affected KDE 2 systems, a patch for the 2.2.2 source code has
been made available which fixes these vulnerabilities. Contact your
OS vendor / binary package provider for information about how to
obtain updated binary packages.

11/26/2002 FozZy of the "Hackademy Audit Project"
notified the KDE Security Team
<security@kde.org> about vulnerable code parts.
11/27/2002 Patches for the initially reported vulnerabilites
were applied to KDE CVS.
11/27/2002 An audit of KDE CVS was started to find more instances
of the problematic code sequences.
12/06/2002 KDE 3.1 release was delayed because the audit was not
yet finished.
12/17/2002 Patches for KDE 2.2.2 were created.
12/20/2002 KDE 3.0.5a tarballs were generated and released.
12/21/2002 Public Security Advisory by the KDE Security team.